I'm not sure if it's my Graphics Card or Processor.

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Sean P

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Aug 15, 2014
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Like I said I would do, I bought a XFX Radeon HD 6870 2gb for a steal, $45. It is running in PCIE 4x, since my processor only has 4 lanes. That's my question. Once i installed this card i was expecting to wait for the coil whine to go crazy when i fired up my game(Black ops 2) on lowest settings since i had to play on that on my onboard. But for some reason the frame rate stayed anywhere from 55-120 on lowest settings 800x600. So i cranked everything to the absolute max and the frame rate was the same. Now I know a few things about bottlenecks, so I'm guessing if I'm changing the settings with no performance gains or losses that it's the processor bottlenecking the GPU. I guess it was kinda dumb for me to pair a top-of-the-line 2011 graphics card with a bottom of the line 2013 core. I'll keep looking into it, but some advice and answers would serve me very well(and maybe some future processors that would go good with it)
 
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Sakkura

The 6870 is relatively low-end by today's standards, so it's not like you need a particularly high-end CPU for it. An FX-6300, Core i3, or maybe a used Core...
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Sakkura

Sakkura

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Aug 22, 2011
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You can look at GPU usage in a monitoring program like MSI Afterburner; in games, it should be near 100% unless there's bottlenecking going on (CPU bottlenecking, usually).

The 6870 wasn't really top of the line in 2011, that would be the 6970 - but maybe that's what you mean? That would fit the 2GB memory too, because the 6870 only had 1GB.
 
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MarkW

MarkW

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Your processor only has four lanes of what? All Intel I3, I5, and I7 CPU's have at least 16 PCIe lanes. It might only have 2 cores, and possibly hyperthreading too. But 2 cores is not enough for most games, and most games do not want to use hyperthreading since that means sharing the core between two threads.
 
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Sean P

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Nope, this card has 2GB. I'm guessing this is the equivalent of a X70 series nVidia card then, so like cut back version of top of the line. But this is the link of my card.
http://www.amazon.com/XFX-Radeon-HD6870-PCIE-Dual/product-reviews/B005FPT37Q

I already use MSI afterburner to set a fan curve, I'll use that in some games to see if it is bottlenecking.
 
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Sakkura

Sakkura

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Some of AMDs APU platforms only offer 4 PCIe lanes.
 
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Sean P

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My processor(Sempron x4 3850) only has 4 PCI-E lanes. Do you know aof any good processors i could pair this with? I just need a general idea so i can look for used parts of it, since my budget is very tight. I'm thinking either an amd fx 6300 or i7 3770k/2600k
 
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Sakkura

Sakkura

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The 6870 is relatively low-end by today's standards, so it's not like you need a particularly high-end CPU for it. An FX-6300, Core i3, or maybe a used Core i5 (if you find a cheap CPU + motherboard) would complement the 6870 well.
 
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Sean P

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I just did, CPU usage was around 93% while the graphics card was at 27%. That's in the campaign of Call of Duty World at War, but sometimes(like when the village got airstriked) the GPU usage would go up to 80% with the CPU following right behind it at 60%. It makes no sense, but I'm pretty sure thats a bottleneck if CPU usage is 93% and GPU is at 27.
 
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Sean P

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All right, thanks! And that was kinda my plan, to get a high end(not top of the line) previous generation card to do most things fine at medium to high for really cheap. I'll look into some of those processors. :D

 
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Sean P

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How wounld an i7 970 pair with this?

 
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MarkW

MarkW

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Amazing. I am surprised that you can even play games on 4 lanes of PCIe 2.0. I suspect the lack of PCIe lanes is as much of a bottleneck as the CPU is.
 
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Sean P

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How would an AMD Athlon x4 860k do? I heard that CPU is the same as the AMD A10-7850k but without the graphics onboard. But if I upgrade my CPU that means I have to upgrade my motherboard and power supply, but I guess it's time to go to the more performance sector of computers, and not the budget side. If not I'll spend a little extra on an i7 or i5 so, if I upgrade the card again I won't have to make a completely new PC.

 
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